You could take the time to learn to survive the subjunctive (you should, actually), but this trick with the past participle will help you avoid it entirely. This is a huge bonus if the subjunctive gives you the willies.

So, without further ado, I present to you Spanish past participles and their many, many uses!

Spanish Past Participles: The Lazy Learner’s Favorite Grammar Trick

What’s a Past Participle?

Glad you asked.

The past participle is a verb form that’s typically used with perfect tenses.

Think “I have forgotten,” in English. In this sentence, “have” is the auxiliary verb, or helping verb, and “forgotten” is the past participle of “to forget.”

Spanish past participles work almost the same way. In this case our example translates to “He olvidado,” where “he” (from haber) is the auxiliary verb and “olvidado” (from olvidar) is the past participle.

It’s easy to form the past participle in Spanish. All you have to do is drop the ending (-ar, -er or -ir) from the infinitive verb and add –ado or –ido, depending on the verb. –Ar verbs take –ado. –Ir and –er verbs take –ido. Check out the examples below.

–Ar

Acostar—acostado

Casar—casado

Tumbar—tumbado

-Er

Llover—llovido

Ser—sido

Deber—debido

-Ir

Herir—herido

Dormir—dormido

Ir—ido

Of course there are a few irregulars, but learning irregulars is a cinch for a Spanish whiz like you. Here are a few of the most common.

Escribir—escrito

Romper—roto

Volver—vuelto

Morir—muerto

Hacer—hecho

Sorry, but the only way to learn these irregulars is to memorize them! But you can make this easier by hearing the past participle in everyday speech with FluentU.

The Many Uses of the Spanish Past Participle

The Past Participle in Perfect Tenses

You’ll most commonly see the past participle used in perfect constructions (in fact, you probably already know how to do this!).

Perfect constructions are used to express that an action began in the past and has continued happening up until the present (or the moment indicated if you’re speaking in the past or the future). In English, the present perfect would be, “Erin has swum every day this summer.” In Spanish, “Erin ha nadado todos los días este verano.”

Forming the perfect is straightforward; you only have to ever really worry about conjugating one verb: haber. Now here’s what’s really cool. All you have to do is tack on the past participle to your conjugated haber and you’ve got yourself a perfect tense! Watch.

Erin ha nadado. (Erin has swum.)

Erin había nadado. (Erin had swum.)

Erin hubiera nadado… (Erin would have swum…)

Erin habrá nadado. (Erin will have swum.)

Notice a pattern? The past participle never changes. So, yeah, you pretty much already know how to do this. Just use what you know about the verb tenses to conjugate haber and add the past participle. Check out this article (where people get murdered!) if you need to brush up on your past tenses.

But now that you know how to form past participles and how to use them with perfect tenses, things are about to get real. Real cool, that is.

Using the Participle as an Adjective

The past participle is often used as an adjective. How about that? By learning one word, you’ve really learned two now! As an adjective, the participle indicates the result of an action or a state of being, much the same as in English. Use the participle as you would any other adjective. Remember, adjectives must agree with number and gender in Spanish.

And of course you can use the participle as an adjective independently. (Because really, who wants to conjugate more verbs?) In these examples, the participle is used to make an exclamation, interject or refer to a state of being or situation.

And here’s a cool usage. You can use the participle as an adjective to indicate a temporary relationship between two things. It’s kind of like cheating. Instead of forming an entire phrase, you can just replace it with the appropriate participle. Sometimes an adverb is necessary to indicate the exact timeline.

The Participle as a Noun

So now you’ve learned two different words after having learned just the participle. I promised you three though, didn’t I? Well, here’s the third.

The past participle in Spanish is also occasionally used as a noun. I bet you’ve already seen this before. Think about una tostada (a toasted sandwich), un muerto (a dead person) or los hechos (the facts or the happenings).

With a little practice recognizing past participles being used as nouns, you’ll begin to pick up a natural rhythm for what can be used as a noun and what cannot. A simple way to think about it is that the past participle as a noun often corresponds to the –ed object nouns in English. For example, the painted one (el pintado), the drowned one (el ahogado) or the affected one (el afectado).

Although not all nouns in Spanish are past participles of verbs, a great number are derived from a common root. So by learning the verb, you’re likely learning a noun (or two) anyway. Here’s an example of two nouns that are derived from one verb: Amar could become amado (the loved one) or amante (the lover). Amado is the participle.

Here are some other participles that are used as nouns.

Decir—el dicho (the saying)

Estar—el estado (the state of being)

Herir—el herido (the injured)

Poner—el puesto (a post/position)

Acusar—el acusado (the accused)

Volver—la vuelta (the turn/a walk)

Using the Participle with Other Verbs

The participle can be paired up with verbs other than haber to achieve a few more useful effects in Spanish. Used with the verb ser, the past participle will help you form the passive voice. In this case, the participle has the same form as the noun that it refers to, as it is in an adjective form.

La casa fue destruida por un huracán. (The house was destroyed by a hurricane.)

Similarly, verbs that express state of being or a result of an action (parecer, quedar(se), estar, mostrar, resultar…) can be paired with the participle as an adjective. Again, the participle has the same form as the noun to which it refers.

With action verbs, the participle can be used to indicate how the action is done or the result of an action. In this case, the participle is used like an adverb. Again, the participle must match the gender and quantity of the subject.

The Past Participle Versus the Infinitive

Most of the time, the past participle is also not used as a noun (except when it is; see above). Instead, use the infinitive.

Ganar es mejor que perder. (Winning is better than losing.)

And to get uber fancy, you can make theperfect infinitive by using haber with the participle.

Haber vivido en los años treinta, hubiera sido muy difícil. (To have lived in the thirties would have been very difficult.)

DON’T SKIP ME! This is a super easy way to express probability in past time instead of messing about with subjunctive and conditionals. Use deber de followed by the perfect infinitive. Watch.

Deben de haber perdido los juguetes. (They must have lost the toys.)

Debe de haber tomado el gorro. (He must have taken the hat.)

Resources for Extra Spanish Past Participle Practice

Look at your past participle boss-ness. You can sling a past participle with the best of them now. But just to make sure, here are a couple resources that you can use to practice.

Barbara Kuczun Nelson’s page at Colby University is one of my favorite websites for learning Spanish. Check out her lesson with the song “¿Dónde jugarán los niños?”

The University Autónoma Metropolitana has a pretty good selection of advanced exercises. Check out their many vocabulary-enriching and editing worksheets. Note that the instructions are in Spanish. (Good practice, right?)

The important thing is to just keep practicing, and soon you won’t even give participles a second thought.

Edward Mack was a part of the inaugural Master’s class in Creative Writing at the Complutense University of Madrid. His diverse ramblings on topics from perpetual bachelordom to murderous country music stars are often sardonic, sometimes poetic, and always entertaining.

And One More Thing…

If you like learning handy Spanish lessons like these—you know, ones that you can actually use right away—then you’ll love FluentU.

FluentU takes real-world videos like music videos, commercials, news, and inspiring talks and turns them into Spanish learning experiences.

Other sites use scripted content. FluentU uses a natural approach that helps you ease into the Spanish language and culture over time. You’ll learn Spanish as it’s actually spoken by real people. For example, you could practice your cool new past participle trick by watching the four-part “Have You Ever?” street interview series.

FluentU has a wide variety of videos—topics like soccer, TV shows, business, movies and even magical realism, as you can see here:

FluentU brings native videos within reach with interactive transcripts. You can tap on any word to look it up instantly. Every definition has examples that have been written to help you understand how the word is used. If you see an interesting word you don’t know, you can add it to a vocab list.

Learn all the vocabulary in any video with FluentU’s Learn Mode. Swipe left or right to see more examples of the word you’re on.

The best part is that FluentU keeps track of the vocabulary that you’re learning, and it recommends you examples and videos based on the words you’ve already learned. Every learner has a truly personalized experience, even if they’re learning the same video.

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